The Incredible Perceptive grace of Jan Both
The Gallery
Jan Dirksz Both (between 1610 and 1618, Utrecht - August 9, 1652, Utrecht), brother of Andries Both, was a Dutch painter.
From 1634 to 1637 he was taught by Bloemaert and the painter Gerard van Honthorst before travelling to Rome ca. 1637. There he met the French painter Claude Lorrain, with whom he collaborated on a series of landscape paintings. His landscapes are typically peopled by peasants driving cattle or travellers gazing on Roman ruins in the light of the evening sun The everyday life of the streets of Rome became a favourite theme in his works. On his return to Utrecht after the death of his brother in 1642, he stopped producing genre pieces and focused instead on pictures of Italian landscapes bathed in a warm, golden light. This theme was adopted by several other Dutch painters, the Italianites
The audio below is ..."Voorspel"...by Jan Van Eyck from his solo collection "Der Fluyten Lust-hof" published in 1654 and so whimsically performed by Marion Verbruggen on the soprano recorder.
"The finer the sense for the beautiful and the lovely, and the fairer and lovelier the object presented to the sense ; the more exquisite the individual's capacity of joy, and the more ample his means and opportunities of enjoyment, the more heavily will he feel the ache of solitariness, the more unsubstantial becomes the feast spread around him. What matters it, whether in fact the viands and the ministering graces are shadowy or real, to him who has not hand to grasp nor arms to embrace them..."
From ..."The Blossoming of the Solitary Date Tree"...by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Audio above is a Prelude in La majeur from the Premier Livre of pieces for Viole by Louis de Caix D'Hervelois published in 1708 and performed by Jordi Savall on a beautifully vocal and grand viol by an unknown french maker of the late 17th century,and with Ton Koopman on a Clavecin by Jean Henry Hemsch of 1754,
,Ariane Maurette on a Barak Norman Gamba of 1697,and Hopkinson Smith on a new theorbo by Jacob van de Geest accompanying.
"Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies..."
From..."To Autumn"...by John Keats
The Audio directly above is "Dans nos Bois" ...by Jean Henri D'Anglebert,who performed the post of Court Claveciniste at Versailles for his teacher(Jacques de Chambonnieres) and held it after after his teacher died.It is performed on a rare and exquisite Clavecin by Jacques Germain in 1785.Germain along with Taskin took French Harpsichord making into it's greatest heights as the old world transitioned into the modern and soon regrettably left this centuries-old remarkably evolved technology to be used for firewood at the Parisienne Conservatories during the time of Napoleon .The Performer Arthur Haas lends this piece a beautiful state of mind with a subtle yet expressively clear concept...much the same spirit as Jan Both conveyed in the canvases surrounding it.
Hear the voice of the bard,
Who present, past and future, sees;
Whose Ears have heard
The Holy Word That walk'd among the ancient trees:
Calling the lapsed soul,
And weeping in the evening dew;
That might control
The starry pole,
And fallen,fallen light renew!
"O Earth, O Earth, return!
Arise from out the dewy grass!
Night is worn,
And the morn
Rises from the slumbrous mass.
"Turn away no more;
Why wilt thou turn away ?
The starry floor,
The watery shore,
Is given thee till the break of day.'
"HEAR THE VOICE"...by William Blake
The Audio below is ...Prelude from "Sixieme suite de pieces pour la flute traversiere avec la basse" by Joseph Bodin de Boismortier.Anne Savignat on Flute and Christine Plubeau on Viol convey this with an enticingly vivid mysteriousness that somehow slips into the canvases surrounding it.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
From..."The Road Not Taken"...by Robert Frost
The Audio above is ..."La Dedicace" from La Rhetorique des Dieux by Denis Gaultier (1600-1672) It has the most nobly nostalgic expression as conveyed by Hopkinson Smith on one of the rarest of rarities...(a Surviving 11 course lute by the famous Bolognese Luthier Pietro Railich),This lute has such a remarkable expressive intimacy as to encompass the sun.moon,and stars all within it's tonal palette.